{"id":6607,"date":"2020-04-17T13:19:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T17:19:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6607"},"modified":"2020-04-17T13:19:28","modified_gmt":"2020-04-17T17:19:28","slug":"invalidating-and-trivializing-my-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=6607","title":{"rendered":"Invalidating and Trivializing my Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have been reading my journal for 1986, and came across this entry about the noise phobia<\/a> in November.<\/p>\n

I had a bad time with anger yesterday.\u00a0 <\/span>Feelings of rage kept surfacing, and I would let myself feel it, but that was painful because it just emphasizes that I am powerless to do anything about the noise, so then I would just stifle the anger which is painful in its own way.\u00a0 <\/span>I don’t know what to do with the anger.\u00a0 <\/span>I asked Dana but he couldn’t really help.\u00a0 <\/span>He doesn’t have the same difficulty letting go of anger.\u00a0 <\/span>I said something interesting, I said if it’s something real, I don’t have trouble letting go of it.\u00a0 <\/span>I suppose what I meant by something real was a situation were I’m angry at a person who is close to me, not these impersonal situations where somebody is making noise that hurts me and I don’t know who they are.\u00a0 <\/span>But what does it mean that I define one as real and the other as unreal.\u00a0 <\/span>“Real” means there is something I can work on, a relationship or situation that I can confront and perhaps affect.\u00a0 <\/span>“Unreal” means I have no power in the situation, it’s “all in my head”, so I should just stop fussing about it.\u00a0 <\/span>What I’m doing is invalidating myself.\u00a0 <\/span>My reaction to noise is not “all in my head”, it’s in my body too, I feel just as sick as when I’m down with candida poisoning.\u00a0 <\/span>And I’m making it worse by being angry at myself, as though I had any control over my reaction.\u00a0 <\/span>So I’m invalidating my own feelings, trivializing them, (you shouldn’t<\/span> be angry), and angry at myself for being helpless.\u00a0 <\/span>No wonder I feel so beaten.\u00a0 <\/span>But I’m not being beaten by the noise so much as by my own feelings.\u00a0 <\/span>The noise reaction is not unreal, it is a stress reaction, but I’m making it worse by being angry at myself, and by invalidating myself.\u00a0 <\/span>I don’t know how to stop doing that, but I will at least try to become aware that that’s what I’m doing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Reading this, my heart just breaks for myself. \u00a0I didn’t have enough information, and I followed the pattern I learned growing up. \u00a0That I “wanted to be miserable<\/a>,” that my pain and my needs were irrelevant. \u00a0No one understands what I’m going through because they don’t notice the sound. \u00a0Someone even suggested that I go to the airport and find out that the people were really nice. \u00a0I couldn’t even see a sign saying “airport” without my heart going off in what I now understand was a fight or flight reaction. \u00a0People would say to me the same thing my mother said “Don’t be so sensitive,” as though I had a choice.<\/p>\n

What I needed was for someone to say “What you’re dealing with is ‘hyperacusis<\/a>,’ a possible consequence of PTSD. \u00a0Will power won’t change it.” \u00a0When I first got here to Kendal, I had trouble<\/a> with a lot of the noises that I heard when I was here in this apartment. \u00a0I remember being very scared briefly and then remembering that if I knew what it was I would stop reacting. \u00a0Also, my reaction was nothing like the fight\/flight I experienced with the airplanes. \u00a0By this time I’ve stopped noticing a lot of common noises. There is a set of new noises which are catching my attention: people’s voices, both outside and in the hall. \u00a0I’m pretty sure it’s people having to talk louder because of social distancing. \u00a0It is distracting, but fortunately I don’t go into fight\/flight.<\/p>\n

I talked to my therapist about it this morning, and she said I had learned to talk to myself like a good parent. \u00a0“Once you know what the noise is, you will stop being so bothered by it.” \u00a0I started to feel wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been reading my journal for 1986, and came across this entry about the noise phobia in November. I had a bad time with anger yesterday.\u00a0 Feelings of rage kept surfacing, and I would let myself feel it, but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-depression","category-journal","category-trauma"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}